Thursday

May 14, 2020 at 3:01 AM

How were we feeling at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic?

That's a question the Worcester Youth Center hopes to be able to answer one day with its multimedia HopeVid-2020 project. In part, the project will be a time capsule of the creativity of youth center members as they expressed their feelings.

In the here and now it is an outlet that people will also soon be able to see, listen to, and share online as HopeVid-2020 is produced by the Worcester Youth Center remotely with social distancing.

"When this whole lockdown happened, we noticed our kids had a lot of emotions bottled up inside of them," said Nydia Colon, director of creative leadership at the Worcester Youth Center. "We know the arts are a good outlet. Why not create a project that lets kids express how they're feeling right now — a historical record of how the youth center was feeling at that time — and provide a vehicle to express themselves emotionally."

Through music, rap, poetry, painting, drawing and other arts, youths will be putting out creative work that they've been working on individually and together.

"I'm pretty sure we're going to have wonderful pieces of art, music, and we're going to thread it over our timeline and it's going to be a wonderful thing," Colon said. "I think it's going to be truthful and raw and beautiful at the same time."

The Worcester Youth Center, located at 326 Chandler St., offers a number of services, activities and programs to youths ages 14 to 24. It has about 425 active members, and prior to the pandemic, about 50 to 60 would come in daily, according to executive director Samuel N. Martin.

"There's a lot of things available to me and anyone who goes there," said Dante Kubicki, 17, a junior at Doherty Memorial High School who joined as soon as he could at 14 just after he had moved to Worcester with his family from New York.

Among other things, the new world of the pandemic "just really feels very abnormal to me. It feels out of place. Not boring, but I'm missing something. I'm lacking," Kubicki said.

"When we sent our kids home Thursday and we were not going to open Friday, we got the Zoom app. All across the world it's how people are communicating," said Colon.

Now youth center members can check in online via Zoom at the same time the doors would normally open at 2 p.m.

"I think it's going well. We had to get the word out and understand what the process is," Martin said of moving online. "Kids are in different situations. Some are taking care of siblings while parents are working. Unfortunately, some may not be taking it as seriously as they should be. I think it's a mixed bag in general. They're frustrated they don't have a youth center to go to, and even school to go to … One kid said, 'I'm putting the phone down and doing some reflection.'"

The youth center decided to make HopeVid-2020 its major project in the current situation, Colon said.

"First of all, they have all this energy from being inside. The Zoom platform is brilliant and lets them create something that's important to them. The digital arts — kids are instinctively drawn to that. They really, really took to it," she said.

One hope is that the HopeVid-2020 time capsule will become part of the archives of the Worcester Historical Museum, Colon said.

Meanwhile, a number of volunteers in areas such as sound editing have been stepping forward to bring their expertise to the project. Many youths are creating remotely on their phones and have been given tips on recording, Colon said. Roberto Diaz, program director at the youth center, is coordinating music production. When youths send in their recordings and footage to the youth center, Diaz and volunteer sound engineers and editors will start mixing and put it all together on a timeline and all the youth center's social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

"We're talking about a landing page for the entity itself," Colon said.

Following the daily 2 p.m. "well-checking," youth center members break out into groups and mini-workshops.

Kubicki is a member of a youth center music group that is working on an extended piece that will allow for individual expression while also being a whole, unified work. He can play several instruments, including cello, string bass, electric bass and some guitar. He is also a member of a jazz band and has played rock and R&B.

"You check in at 2 p.m. and they ask on a scale of 1 to 10 how are you feeling. Then they move on the question of the day, then we split off into our groups," Kubicki said.

"In the music group we kind of do our own thing and bring it together. We decided on a beat together. I'm sticking to the instrumental part (on the extended piece)."

There's a "solid eight or so" in Kubicki's music group right now. "Some people come in for a day. You get an outside perspective," he said.

"It's really how are we doing and how we are feeling. My goal is to create a riff so that I can incorporate that into the beat. Nydia's given us a date (to finish the piece). It's actually coming together."

At the end of the session each day, youth center members may all come together again and "maybe share some music or just keep up with each other," Kubicki said.

Kubicki has another date in mind as he works on the project. As things stood when he was being interviewed, Kubicki is scheduled to begin basic training on June 22 to become a member of the Army Reserves, specializing as an auto mechanic. "Anything on wheels," he said. He'll maintain that commitment through his senior year at Doherty and graduation and also likely through college, which he hopes to attend.

Moving to Worcester from New York, when he joined the Worcester Youth Center, "I didn't know what to expect," he said. The youth center helped him get his first job as a caddy at the Green Hill Park golf course. "There's a lot of people to help you with whatever tough situations you're going through. There's someone to talk to. There's a lot more people you can connect with," he said.

He lives at home in Worcester with his "baby sister," father and step-mother. Besides school, Kubicki has a job at Walgreen's Pharmacy.

"I do notice a bit some more stress about it," he said of his feelings during the pandemic. "Especially working in an essential environment. I also spend a lot more time in the house unfortunately with the whole COVID going on. I usually play basketball, or I'm running, exercising."

But Kubicki said he's enjoying being a part of the HopeVid-2020 project, and might visit other groups online. "The writing portion — I might be on that a little bit," he said.

"I do think it really targets my interests personally. I love the arts in general. It allows you to express creatively in the unfortunate time we're in. This is actually us, how we're feeling, how we're doing — and just really let loose."

Colon also oversees a writing group as part of the project. "People are going into other groups (besides their specialty). 'Can I see pictures?' 'Can I write a poem?' They can say, 'OK, this is what it looks like to me. This is what it sounds like to me' … When they put it on as a piece of poetry, or monologue or paint something, you know it's coming from them. That's their truth," she said.

"The response has been so exciting. I think it really has shown us all over again that we're social beings and we cannot succeed alone without each other. With the 2 p.m. check-in, it's just nice to hear another human being."